Tuesday, 27 March 2012

Having just picked up Barrowmaze and read it in a cursory fashion, I thought it would be fun to run as a rather leisurely pbp. If you are interested, the link is above. No number of players is too many, I should think, but if there are fewer than four people interested, I'll probably give it a pass.

When my advanced pdf of Goodman Games DCC RPG arrives in my email, I'll be happy to set up another Barrowmaze group under that ruleset.

Thursday, 15 March 2012

Well, my interest in the Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG peaked when they set up a sweet pre-ordering deal.

Last summer, I went to Dueling Grounds in Toronto for Free RPG Day, and picked up the DCC RPG starter module. Sweet. There were not many stores doing Free RPG Day in the area (DG is the only one I know of), so I wanted to support them. I bought some product there, and I placed my pre-order through them.

As a result, I will be running a DCC RPG event at Dueling Grounds on this year's Free RPG Day. If time permits, I am planning on running two events for this system. I will post more details here as they become available!

Wednesday, 14 March 2012

If you don’t want spoilers, or don’t want
to read my rambling about movies, skip it.
Because this post is going to contain spoilers. And it is going to ramble. You have been warned!

I had been burned by so many bad Batman
films that, when Batman Begins hit the theatre, I decided to wait for the
DVD. It wasn’t until the context of Dark
Knight that I really began to kick myself for that decision. I simply wasn’t ready to accept another
Batman film at the time for what it was.

Leaping on the bandwagon for John
Carter seems to consist of jumping upon it with both feet and the
benefits of Mars’ reduced gravity to kick it in the guts. I won’t be doing that here. Overall, I was pleased by John Carter. I will have a few complaints, though, so bear
with me.

My first impression is that we are treated
to a full story, which is thankfully becoming more common again as time goes on,
thanks in large part (I think) to the success of film projects like Lord
of the Rings. A full story is
appreciated from this quarter, at least.
I think those in the “too much exposition” crowd have become used to the
Hollywood shorthand-instead-of-story, and there is still a very active trade in
this sort of film making.

John Carter does suffer a bit from two
current Hollywood trends: (1) everything
must be bigger and badder, and (2) the reluctant hero.

As to the second, John Carter as Edgar Rice
Burroughs envisioned him is anything but a reluctant hero. I understand the attraction of a Bilbo or a
Frodo, who has adventure thrust on them without necessarily seeking it, but the
ERB heroes tend to be more empowered than that.
This film shifts empowerment to Deja Thoris in a way that works, but I
feel that the same could have been accomplished without making John Carter
reluctant to get involved.

As to the first, there is actually very
little of it in John Carter. The white
apes are larger than I remembered them from the novels, but not by much, while
the banths seemed smaller. Of course,
the banths are dead, while the white apes are alive when introduced.

What to do with the therns? In the original work, they were the
priesthood of Barsoom, feeding off the dying carcass of the planet like
yellow-wigged parasites. The relationship
between the therns and John Carter’s arrival on Barsoom isn’t from the novels,
but it works as an extrapolation…including the idea that the therns are
preparing their control of Jassoon to feed off when Barsoom is at last truly a
dead world. They are definitely “bigger
and badder” than they were in the novels, where the greatest resistance to
their overthrow is social and political.

Exactly what motivates the therns in this
movie is unclear, and that is an unfortunate flaw. But I do like the idea of the therns as a
series enemy, and it seems likely that we shall see them again in Gods
of Mars. I did like the use of
the therns to make the frame story from the novel (involving Edgar Rice
Burroughs being made the guardian of John Carter’s remains) a larger part of
the overall story. In a continuing film
series, the therns could also then be tied into the invasion from Jupiter that
marks ERB’s last work on the John Carter series, and could be tied as well into
a series about ERB’s moon adventures.

The green Barsoomians (the Tharks and
Warhoon) are very well realized in this film.
The locking of tusks in challenge was well done. The four arms are used with body language
that pairs arm motions both as above-and-below sets, and right-and-left sets,
depending upon context. Likewise, the
white apes, the calot (Woola) and the thoats.
Willem Dafoe, as Tars Tarkas, is nigh perfect.

I had expected to dislike the red
Barsoomians, because they looked rather like normal Earth-types on the trailers. However, when viewing the film, there is a
definite red cast to their skin and their blood is as blue as that of the green
Barsoomians. I would have liked to have
mention of their being oviparous in the film, including perhaps sight of the
egg that would hatch into Cathoris. I
found the red Barsoomians well cast, with special note to Deja Thoris and
Kantos Kan, who are, of course, important to the series as a whole. Kantos Kan seems to be a model ERB hero in
this film, demonstrating a sense of humour, a willingness to accept whatever
comes, and a clear head every time he is on screen.

(Note:
There is a lot more skin in the ERB novels – both male and female – than
in the film. If the film followed the
Martian clothing fashions of ERB, it would have received an R rating for sure! There is also a good bit of gender
stereotyping and gender role inequality in the novels that is quietly removed
from the film, where de-sexualized female warriors stand side-by-side with
de-sexualized male warriors. Not so the
original novels, which are, frankly, overtly sexist by modern standards. The vast majority of ERB’s work dealt with
relations between men and women from a very sexist viewpoint, and the
unnaturalness of clothing was also a common theme.)

The action was good, particularly the scene
where John Carter slaughters a great mound of the Warhoon. The scene brought to mind Robert E. Howard’s
Conan, as a direct literary descendent of the Edgar Rice Burroughs heroes (REH’s
novel Amulric is very much a cross between John Carter and ERB’s Pellucidar
novels). The scene where John Carter
hides by leaping up to a ledge area was reminiscent of ERB’s other great hero,
Tarzan of the Apes.

There are people who mistakenly believe
John Carter to rip off Star Wars, with its jed, banths, and
padwars, but ERB’s novel, A Princess of Mars, was first
published in 1917. Star Wars is derivative of John Carter, not the other way around. I applaud Disney for not changing things so
that the link between ERB’s Barsoom novels and Lucasfilm’s Star Wars franchise becomes obscured. Here’s a hint: If the John Carter series continues, we may
yet encounter a sith!

In the original novels, John Carter was
immortal, having been apparently the same age as long as he could remember,
with a memory that stretched back centuries.
The quest for immortality was of interest to ERB (he made Tarzan
immortal twice), probably stemming from Edwin Lester Arnold’s 1891
novel, Phra the Phoenician.

In the film, “Uncle Jack” remembers
dandling a then young-adult “Ned” Burroughs on his knee (although John Carter
seems to be less than 20 years older than Edgar), and he spends 10 years trying
to find a way back to Mars without seeming to age in doing so. Likewise, he appears to be the same age when
he had a family in Virginia. So there
are tantalizing hints that the film John Carter may be as immortal as the novel
John Carter.

Overall, I found that John Carter stayed
true to the spirit of ERB’s Barsoom, even if it did not cleave to the sexist
stereotypes of the era it was written in.
The film extrapolates well from the novel series, and sets up the therns
well for a sequel (presumably Gods of Mars) wherein we will see
John Carter as a truer ERB-type hero, committed to action from the first frame
of the movie.

The visuals were very impressive,
particularly the CGI work on the Tharks, Warhoon, and other Martian
creatures. The appearance changes of the
Therns were very effective. The
screenplay was obviously written by folks who not only knew the original works,
but who loved them. There is quite a bit
of “What can we extrapolate from this?” but very little of “Let’s make this,
but make it BIGGER, BETTER, and DIFFERENT!!!!” that damages so many film
translations.

I felt that John Carter was worthy of
both the time and cost to see it on the big screen. Contrast this to the Lord of the Rings films,
each of which I needed to see twice – once to grit my teeth and grimace through
what had been done to the novels, and a second time to watch it for what it
was, knowing how it was changed.

I give it a solid 7 out of 10, and would be
more than happy to see Gods of Mars if and when it comes out. I would love a Tarzan, Pellucidar,
or Carson
of Venus series that was as true to its source material, while being
updated to modern sensibilities (just, please, don’t make Tarzan a reluctant
hero!).

The Edgar Rice Burroughs novels intertwine
in ways that would make these potentially all one big franchise – Tarzan, after
all, went to Pellucidar, and there may be hints in Tarzan: The Lost Adventure
(finished by Joe Lansdale) that the cave led not again to Pellucidar, but would
allow John Carter-like transit to Barsoom.
Could what T:TLA describes as a praying mantis-like creature from
Pellucidar actually have been a green Barsoomian from Mars? Based on the way other ERB novels refer to
each other, I believe that might have been what ERB had been planning. Tarzan would have been the third earthman ERB
had sent to Mars.

I feel that this movie is destined to be
considered a classic of the genre in years to come. John Carter isn’t a perfect film by
any means. Neither is Batman
Begins. But, when Gods
of Mars hits the big screen, I am guessing that a few people will be
kicking themselves for not having seen John Carter in the theatre when they
had the chance. This is a very enjoyable
film for what it is.

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